Changes in Adolescents’ Brains and Behaviors: Implications for Mental Health
A special issue of Children (ISSN 2227-9067). This special issue belongs to the section "Pediatric Mental Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 September 2024) | Viewed by 2242
Special Issue Editors
2. Sleep Medicine, Neurocenter of Southern Switzerland, Ente Ospedaliero Cantonale (EOC), 6900 Lugano, Switzerland
Interests: sleep; local sleep; brain development; EEG; psychiatry; parasomnias; insomnia; dreaming
2. Child Neuropsychiatry Unit, IRCCS Istituto Giannina Gaslini, Genoa, Italy
Interests: developmental psychology; sleep; prematurity; affective neuroscience; adolescent neuropsychiatry neuropsychoanalysis applied neurosciences eating disorders; EEG; neurodevelopmental disorders; perinatal medicine
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
It is a pleasure for us to invite you to cooperate on this Special Issue entitled “Changes in adolescents’ brains and behaviors: implications for mental health”.
While the most rapid and dramatic brain changes occur during the first years of life, adolescent brains are still highly plastic. White matter connections are locally strengthened or weakened in response to environmental stimuli, while gray matter asynchronously decreases in different cortical regions due to neuronal loss (‘pruning’) and/or intra-cortical myelination. Sleep plays a fundamental role in such a complex and delicate re-wiring process, which makes adolescence a highly vulnerable life period and the breeding ground for major chronic psychiatric disorders.
With rapid changes occurring in our society (including the advent of Internet and related technologies, the COVID-19 outbreak and the potential threaten of other pandemics, the awakening of gender minorities’ awareness and the multiplication of social disparities among ethnic minorities), the risk range for developing a psychiatric condition, especially substance abuse, mood, anxiety and self-harm has widened. This is having a detrimental impact on adolescents’ global health, with an increase in suicidality and in DALYs (disability-adjusted life years), and about one third of adolescents suffer from at least one psychological, behavioral and emotional disorder. Novel research and social services and policies are needed to prevent the worsening of this trend, and hopefully, reverse the course of these conditions.
This Special Issue focuses on adolescents’ mental health and aims to deepen both biological and environmental factors predisposing the emergence of psychopathology during adolescence, with a specific attention on sleep as a mediating factor and on new therapeutic strategies.
Therefore, we invite colleagues to present original research, case reports and series and review papers on this essential research topic.
We are looking forward to your contributions.
Dr. Anna Castelnovo
Dr. Sara Uccella
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- adolescent psychiatry
- behavioral neuroscience
- sleep
- mood disorders
- self-harm
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